28 to the imagination, then, is not one of resource and ingenuity versus mocking incredulity. There is only the anxiety of the Florentine leaders as they try to anticipate what retaliation the Sienese, invisible within their walls, might be planning; the dread of the catapult loaders; the sight of dead animals and frightened men in a beautiful meadow in Tuscany. . . H ugues Cuénod " I F you sing a phrase as you would speak it, the music will attach it- self naturally to the words," said Hugues Cuénod, the distinguished Swiss tenor, during a conversation we had with him recently, over coffee, in Alice Tully's Central Park South liv- ing room. "Music must be inflexible when you are learning the notes, but when you add the text you must take the opportunity to relax and think about what you are singing." M. Cué- nod, a tall, aristocratic, white-haired man of eighty-four, was trying to ex- plain the mechanics of an effortlessly elegant vocal technique that has sus- tained one of the longest performing careers in musical history. Light streamed across panelled walls as Miss Tully's two white Maltese terriers frolicked at our feet, punctuating the conversation with an occasional yip. M. Cuénod, who is making his Metropolitan Opera début this week, in Franco Zeffirelli's new production of Puccini's "Turandot," told us that he had relinquished some of his fav- orite roles, such as the Evangelist in the Bach St. Matthew Passion ("It's just too high for me now"), but that he continued to perform in opera and in recitals. "I usually share the program with a pianist, and I sing Debussy, Fauré, Poulenc, and Monte- verdi," he said. His role in "Turan- dot"-as the aged Emperor Altoum -was, he added, a bit frightening. "I'm seated on a high throne at the back of the stage, in the center of a forest of steps and pillars, and I have to sing all the way out into that enormous auditorium," he said. "Somebody went to the balcony during my first rehearsal and reported that my voice was coming through clearly. It's never been a large voice, but it's always been clear and well focussed. Funnily enough, 'Turandot' was one of the first operas that made a deep impression on me. In 1927, when I was still a student in Vienna, I saw the German-language première, with J an Kiepura as Calaf and Maria Jeritza as Turandot. I still remember the magnificent robes that Jeritza wore and the crystalline sound of her voice. About ten years ago, I sang the Em- peror in Geneva with Birgit Nilsson, and I had some difficulty maintaining my dignity, because during the pauses in the riddle scene Birgit would turn around and make faces at me. She loves to joke." We asked M. Cuénod to give us some highlights from his remarkable career. He began by saying that his first stage role had been that of the hotel director in the 1928 Paris production of Ernst Krenek's "Jonny Spielt Auf," a jazz opera that caused a sensation at the time. "Then Mary Garden, who was a family friend, decided that I should appear in one of Noël Coward's operettas," he went on. "All I wanted to do was to sing the Bach Evangelist, but Mary had made up her mind, so in 1929 I found my- self in New York doing 'Bitter Sweet' at the old Ziegfeld Theatre. Mary was very forceful and very fond of me. I worked with her on 'Pelléas,' and I sang the role several times in concert performances. Then, in 1932, I joined the Compagnie des Ménestrels. We played a wonderful evening of one-act comic operas by Offenbach for a whole winter in Geneva. Around 1934, af- ter I'd returned to Paris, somebody took me to the house of Nadia Boulanger for her Wednesday-after- noon Bach sessions. I sang an aria for her, she invited me back, and I ended up singing thirty-five Bach cantatas with her that year. Then she orga- nized public concerts with some of her more gifted pupils. W e started with MAR.CH 16, 1987 Monteverdi. She roped in me, Marie- Blanche de Polignac, a couple of other people, and a bass player, and we started working on the madrigals. Eventually, we recorded them, and that was the start of the Monteverdi renaissance. Mlle. Boulanger always looked a bit forbidding-she had white hair drawn back in a bun and wore pince-nez-but, surprisingly, she also had great humor." During the nineteen-forties, M. Cuenod sang recitals and made records, building a reputation as a gifted operatic comprimario and a master of Baroque style. In 1951, his life changed abruptly, when Igor Stravinsky cast him as Sellem, the enthusiastic auctioneer, in the world première of "The Rake's Progress," at the Venice Festival. "It was a part that could have been written for me, it went so well," said M. Cuénod. "The entire musical world was at the Fenice that night, and the result was that, starting at the age of forty-nine, I had a whole different career. I never did big, sustained parts, because my voice wouldn't stand it, but the parts that I had been singing in small opera houses I began doing at Covent Garden, La Scala, Rome, Geneva, and Glynde- bourne. One of my good roles was Vasek, the stutterer in 'The Bartered Bride.' You must play it so that people laugh at you with pity in their voices. At the other end of the scale is Don Basilio in 'Figaro. ' You have to make him nasty but in a funny, bloodcur- dling way. I'm also very fond of Triquet, the old gentleman in 'Eugen Onegin' who sings a French song in the middle of a Russian party, and of M. Taupe, the prompter who comes out at the end of Strauss's 'Capriccio' and explains that without him the music would stop and the audience would wake up." After "The Rake's Progress," M. Cuenod became one of Stravinsky's fa- vorite singers. "In 1952, Igor sent me an atonal cantata that had been writ- ten for me," he told us. "I said I'd try it but didn't know if I could sing a thirteen-minute aria that was written in the middle-the break-of my voice, and that had only one place where you could take a deep breath. Igor said, 'But I have a record of you singing for twenty-two minutes in the T enebrae service. We'll do this to- gether in Hollywood in the autumn.' And we did." M. Cuénod sang other late Stravinsky works-"Canticum